2014-05-01, 06:16 PM
Takebacker Wrote:I'm not talking about the size of maps. I'm talking about the total number of maps in the game. More content = more data = lag/instability = complaints = areas made simpler to shore up space = more content.
The number of maps absolutely shouldn't be a concern when it comes to storing data. The amount of storage a map takes up is probably negligible when compared to images or sound files. The client isn't going to have nearly as much of a problem loading the next map as it is loading a new tileset or new background music, and the server isn't even going to have image or sound data. 500 maps probably isn't much different from 1000 maps in the final game size.
The client likely doesn't have many issues with map data either - it's going to spend much more time loading images and sound files than map data, and while the client is processing calculations on its current map it doesn't need to worry about any other map. The client shouldn't need to care if an area has 10 or 100 maps if the tileset is the same for all of them.
Now I suppose that the server could have an issue with more active content, but the complexity increase from more active maps should scale linearly. Assuming they implemented their physics well, the amount of time spent calculating collisions should be minimal as well regardless of the size of the map. It's possible they've delegated a small amount of power to processing non-player data (I would expect maintaining active connections requires many, many, more cycles since that does increase exponentially), but they'd probably be better off spending their money on upgrading their servers to deal with the increase in computation complexity than spend the manhours rearranging maps to try and save on processing power.